Hi, everyone. Shythony Guytano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Kevin Abstract album, Blush.

Here we have the newest full-length LP from rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, Mr. Kevin Abstract, a Texas native whose creative evolution grows stranger and more difficult to sum up with each new project. I mean, this man's catalog goes back a while at this point. I mean, some of his earliest releases came out over 15 years ago now.

But the Kevin Abstract most fans are aware of is one of the main voices and cofounders of the now defunct boy band, Brockhampton, a music collective whose explosive breakthrough into the mainstream was bookended with a bow-out that was almost as immediate. And while Brockhampton's existence and relevance may seem like a distant memory, I would still say a lot of their most successful releases are holding up pretty well right now.

And their influence most definitely lives on through this newer generation of quirky music collectives out there and the normalization of these boundaryless alternative, but also hip fusions of rap and pop and RnB and rock and whatever else.

But while Kevin and Brockhampton were very upfront and in your face at their peak of relevance, solo work from Mr. Abstract since that time has grown more elusive and distant.

Take, for example, his 2023 record, Blanket, which saw Kevin not only dabbling in a bunch of indie and slacker rock sounds that I don't think his core fan base really expected. But the tracks on this also saw him singing in a lot of different inflections and deliveries that just had his voice sounding very different, like someone else entirely. The masked figure on the front cover of this album, in a lot of ways, is just as unapproachable and detached as the image on the cover of this new LP – you've got the hoodie, you've got the pants, you've got the headphones, the body language, all of which paint this all too familiar picture of a high school antisocial sad boy quietly disappearing into some song that he's listening to, most likely. And while this guy has changed and evolved, he has also always existed in some form or fashion in modern culture.

But even though this cover image in some ways reads as a stereotype, it also feels unknowable because you do have the completely hidden face here, and the body seems superimposed into its surroundings here. You don't see what this guy is sitting on. You just see placed behind him a bunch of library books or cookbooks. Also a posted note that says everything related to blush. It feels weirdly AI-generated. The more I look at it, I just end up with few answers and more questions.

It looks like Kevin wants to keep people guessing with the music on this record, too. Take the first full song on the record, "H-Town", for example, which is a very moody boombap piece with some lonely piano lines. This track not only features a surprise appearance from Ameer Vann, of all people, something I'm sure a lot of fans weren't expecting going into this record. But what's even more telling is the opening verse Kevin lays down on this track, where I think he pretty much spells out his creative MO here. He's also downpitched his voice so that once again; it doesn't necessarily sound like him as he raps. "Too much wasted time, wasted potential / Hate having to tell somebody what I'm finna do / Been crashing out since middle school / Way before an interview / The view is better when you allow heads to get rid of you." Obviously, he alludes here to being off the radar and hating the burdens that come with being connected to others or having lots of people aware of you, the expectations some may have of you as a result of that.

Now that he's jettisoned at least some of that weight, he seems happier about it, saying, further, "Ghost, I'm invisible / I prefer that way / It's hard to fall off track when you built your roads and designed your train." So once again, Kevin doesn't feel like he's climbing anybody else's ladder here. He's on his own path of success, and he is currently enjoying the distance he he is experiencing at this point in his career.

The question is: distance from who, though? Because I wouldn't say this is an isolationist album. In fact, it's a very collab-heavy album. Pretty much every song on this LP has a feature or some prominent crossover. There are actually a lot of tracks where I would say Kevin isn't even the star of the show. Dominic Fike, for example, is very prominent on the cuts where he appears on this record. Danny's track is a pretty sick Danny Brown rap interlude that transitions perfectly into the following song. "I Wasn't There" is this very quiet, tiny, short, indie alt country number that is pretty much helmed by DERBY. And "Abandon Me" is this beautiful ballad that is sung by Quadeca, very notably feels like his songwriting style, too.

So again, I feel like Kevin is creating a bit of distance from this album, but I think it's distance from his audience. And he seems content to melt into the background of his own project here and spend a great deal of time just curating sounds and ideas and guests, not so much being the star of the show a great deal of the time. And even when you do catch his vocals and his trademark songwriting, which if you've heard enough of it between all of his solo records and Brockhampton's albums, you know when you're hearing it. But still, the voice and direction and vision of this album is difficult to pin down because stylistically and creatively, it's just so all over the map. Sometimes on a single track, you'll get these very dreamy, lovely vocal harmonies, also psychedelic soul chops set to drumless gentle raps, and also very raw indie guitar passages, too.

Again, like with Blanket when Kevin's voice does pop up, sometimes it sounds like him, sometimes he sounds like somebody else entirely. Sometimes he sounds like different eras of himself – "Post Break Up Beauty", for example, which is a highlight on here for me personally. It sounds like a leftover from the American Boyfriend era. "97 Jag", which I think is one of the clearest as far as Kevin's rap delivery goes. It's a track with almost this rap/bedroom pop fusion on the production side. Kevin brings almost this young Kanye swagger to his delivery. A strong hook as well, but once more, I will stress, this track is just one of a variety of different sounds and songs on this record. The changes are so constant and so jarring that this project runs more like a compilation or maybe a playlist your friend made.

For sure, there have been great records made with this approach where a main brain is managing a bunch of different voices and collaborators and individuals having input on the album, be it, I don't know, like a Gorillaz or an A$AP Rocky. But unfortunately for Kevin, I wouldn't say he comes out on the other end of this album with much of a voice or a focus. Artistically, I mean. This wouldn't be so bad if the songs individually, track for track, were really solid, really impressive, and really good. But often they're not. I mean, for sure, you do get highlights like that Quadeca cut that I mentioned earlier, which is honestly just a powerful, incredible ballad.

But also you have on this album, the Dominic Fike track, "Geezer", which is like this terrible, Sublime/Everclear '90s summer rap rock acoustic jam mix that was tacky when this thing would get played on the radio, and it still sounds tacky today.

And not even all the features that appear on this thing that Kevin makes room and time and space for are good. Like Drigo on the song "Girlfriend", for example, he sounds asleep at the wheel. And I'd also be lying if I didn't say that the sudden Ameer Vann features on this project were more exciting in concept than in execution. It feels like we're getting a bit of Brockhampton chemistry here that ultimately serves as a reminder of what we're not actually getting. Meanwhile, "Bloom" just feels like this short, pointless Frankenstein monster of several different genres and song ideas being mashed together in the most awkward of ways.

But yeah, in some ways, I do think this album starts off relatively strong. Really, the record's best run of tracks is in the first portion of the tracklist, but it does start to nose dive from there. Unfortunately, I just feel like Kevin slapped a bunch of tracks together. Sure, while many of them may be tracks that he really enjoys and is passionate about on some level, it does sound like he had a pretty fun and interesting time curating all of these ideas and collaborations and crossovers.

But he didn't write or deliver many in the way of great songs in the midst of all of that. He just assembled a bunch of vague allusions to different things and I guess didn't really care that much about where it went or how it sounded when it was all put together, which is why I'm feeling about a light 6 on this project. It's okay. It's fine. It's all right.

Anthony Fantano, Kevin Abstract, Forever.